Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback My feedback - Unpleasant companions, discouraged solo

Hey there,

I have been playing BG3 for a while now (30h is a lot for me at the moment), and I must say I'm not having a lot of fun. There are several things that are bugging me but the greatest is that:

Companions do not make me want to use them, but the game lacks the benefits usually associated with playing solo. I *think* this one is pretty obvious if you've played a few hours, but the companions are unpleasant to say the least, and you aren't made stronger or getting more XP for soloing. That's the biggest issue for me, the alternative appears to be to abuse stealth, and that's not fun (because the enemies react as if it were 1995).

I saw that the latest patch was supposed to reduce their whining, but it's not enough IMHO.

The last patch only changed Shadow. And I really hope that no next patch will affect the personality of the characters! You forget about the people who like these characters the way they are. Stop asking to change someone, better ask to add someone completely different, it will be more logical.

It's not all companions, Larian has already said that you will have more. So in your case, you just must wait.

Yeah, I don't want to see any more changes to the existing characters. Instead we need a party of good aligned members. Camaraderie, adventure and steel on steel . . .

Larian Studio has in any case a lot of room to play around with!

They might just include a form off selectable personalitys for every character, if they already make several builds for them anyways.


° Lae'zel, Yautja Rambo version
° Lae'zel, less cavemen like version, thinks ju~st a little empathic. But only a little.
° Lae'zel, can be turned around into a full fledgled empathic person if just shown enough examples of the concept of kindness.

^
continue onwards in this fashion with other characters.

I could not agree with you more.
I could not stand the rogue character and refused to use him. Who the hell thought it was a good Idea to have him attack the main character? I played 4 playthroughs and could not bring myself to play with him for more than a level. I only used him once just to see if he would get better.
The best part was turning him over to the hunter.

I could not stand the MU either. Also, he suked! Constantly dying.
I hated his "Do this if I die" crap as well and did not do it and left him to rot.

The Gith and the Cleric were not as bad. The warlock was lame but not as offensive as the MU.

Through most of the back story of these three I couldn't care less about their stories and had no desire to do any quest they had.

100% agree with the OP

I sure didn't ask that Larian change these characters. I'm sure someone somewhere appreciates them as they are. I realise the game is not finished yet and more companions will appear in the final release. What really annoys me is the way the game discourages solo play. The alternatives are quite obvious: more XP as in prior BG games or a special bonus as in Divinity or Fallout.

The problem goes away if Larian have another 10+ characters up their sleave. Given that it's most likely 3, I agree it's a problem, but given that the same people who wrote the characters would be tasked with changing/modifying them, it's probably a lost cause. And again, it's not because they're evil - I play/have played evil or neutral characters with evil/neutral companions more often than not - they're just a bit lame. Making them slightly nicer doesn't really change that.

Gale and Astarion seem designed to be dislikable, which they are. Mechanically Gale is a disaster - "let me destroy your good items because I'm a moron. Also, I'm really smart and you're not"
Lae'zel is a wasted opportunity in getting you to sympathise (through shared ship-experience, forced to help each other, mutual respect from that) with someone who is evil. As is, she forgets the ship thing, barking orders rather than trying to convince you as a "friend"/"one of the good ones" to use other people/companions, show strength, murder people etc. After all, you don't know them, you're almost as much of an alien in this part of the world as she is.
Shadowheart is Shadowheart. Pouty, melodramatic, like an unwanted teenage daughter. The lurking manic-pixie-dreamgirl arc only adds to it.
Wyll is nice but so naive that the cliche warlock story is dry so far.

To be fair, the small changes did make Shadowheart seem less needlessly confrontational, so props for that.

An easy change would be to get rid of most of the X approves/disapproves. It's one thing to have companions that react to your actions, and another to feel like you're constantly under inspection at work.

Still think playing solo shouldn't be discouraged so much (even if there were 10 new companions, why prevent people from soloing the game??), but I share your views on the current companions.

I'd be hopeful for that - Lone Wolf was a pretty popular part of D:OS2, and they've already ported over bits that were less popular and more difficult to implement: origins, surfaces...